Rhode Island as a Unit of Measure

Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than the universe!

Rhode Island's total area is only 1545 square miles and 500 of that is water. It's ironic then, that Rhode Island's status as the smallest of the states has led to its being used as a standard unit of measure for things that are really big. Following are some items that have been measured in units of Rhode Island.

A note about dates: for those quotes lacking a publication date, parenthetical dates refer to when the quotes were spotted.

Anatomy

But there's nothing I can do unless I want to cancel the ad deal and go back to writing this blog out of the goodness of my heart and unfortunately the goodness of my heart is not a very large place. Think of Rhode Island, then think 99% smaller, and you've got an idea of the size of the geographical land mass we're metaphorically talking about here.

Fake Steve Jobs, "Look, I hate these friggin Ken Fisher ads as much as you do," February 2, 2008.

People today generally know Marlon Brando for three things: playing the Godfather, playing Superman's dad, and being a whacked-out mass of adipose tissue the size of Rhode Island.

phenry.org, review of On the Waterfront by Paul Henry (July 2006). Submitted by vi.

A sweet, brave, and funny novel—with a heart as big as the entire state of Rhode Island.

Claire Cook's blurb on the trade paperback edition of Every Sunday by Peter Pezzelli (June 2005).

Someday, and hopefully someday soon, I'd like to sit down to watch a postseason baseball game and not get up five hours later with a headache the size of Rhode Island and a nasty case of bedsores.

Sports Illustrated, "Dawn of the dead? Sox awaken hopes of being first to come back from 3-0 down," by John Donovon, October 18, 2004.

I don't know who hired him, but he certainly didn't live up to his own exacting standards. He was a blubbery, middle-aged, gone-to-fat ex-jock with a waist the size of Rhode Island and an even more bulbous ego. It had probably been 20 years since he'd seen his feet without looking in the mirror.

It's my goal to dump 20 pounds over the next 8 weeks... How will I do it? No special diet. No special pills. It's going to take self-discipline. Basically, eat less and exercise more. And it will take a little divine intervention as well, because I've got a sweet tooth as big as Rhode Island.

Shoot somebody in the chest with a soft-nose .44 Magnum and you blow a hole in them the size of Rhode Island.

Persuader by Lee Child, 2003.

"They look like Subarus of the slopes," said one ski bunny with moguls the size of Rhode Island. "Those boots ain't sexy, but they look like they can get the job done."

Maxim, "Das Boots: Which of the new generation of high-performance ski boots are soft on your feet? And which are just plain soft?," by Paul Hochman, January 2002.

In "Brainwashed," Oscar [Goldman]'s secretary, Callahan is dating Washington D.C.'s only straight hairdresser/evil international spy and they think she's revealing OSI secrets to him, because who of us doesn't tell our hairdresser EVERYTHING about our daily lives? So Jamie [Summers] decides to go undercover by getting her hair done. While she's being shampooed, the... spy brainwashes her like he's been brainwashing Callahan and she reveals her bionics. Interestingly, Jamie's new hair is the size of Rhode Island, yet Callahan's "do" is exactly the same as before her brainwashing.

He would no doubt tell you otherwise, but Robert Craig [Evel] Knievel was a mediocre, semi-pro flat-tracker who came out of Butte, Montana, with little [more] than a criminal record and huevos the size of Rhode Island.

I'm kinda sick of roller derby by the last day of practice. There's a large, painful, bloody blister the size of Rhode Island on my foot. Each crossover feels like a large nail being driven into the side of my foot.

Metropolitan, "Metropolitan's Harmon Leon takes on the Bay City Bombers," by Harmon Leon, October 11, 1999.

Do you really think that your brain innervates your muscle fibers via your autonomic nervous system by sending a message like "ATTENTION ALL MUSCLE FIBERS! YOU GUYS ARE CONTRACTING AGAINST FREE WEIGHTS SO YA BETTER MODIFY YOUR ADAPTIVE RESPONSES, MYOLOGICAL TENDENCIES AND BIOMECHANICAL REACTIONS TO GET BIGGER THAN RHODE ISLAND!"

Astral bodies

An asteroid the size of Rhode Island will briefly blot out one of the brightest stars in the sky overnight tonight (March 19-20), and you can watch the rare celestial event live online, weather permitting.

FoxNews.com, "Watch a 45-mile-wide asteroid blot out a star tonight," by Mike Wall, March 19, 2014.

...what are the chances that the Enterprise crew drops Kirk just a CGI filled foot race away from the cave that Spock's in? Hell, even if the entire planet is the size of Rhode Island, the chances against that happening are vanishingly small.

Space-derived materials that survive entry into the Earth's atmosphere are called bolides. The largest known bolide impact occurred 32.5 million years ago at the present-day Chesapeake Bay. It made a crater twice the size of Rhode Island and deep as the Grand Canyon.

The first few million years of the Moon's existence were so violent that few traces of this period remain. As a molten outer layer gradually cooled and solidified into different kinds of rock, the Moon was bombarded by huge asteroids and smaller objects. Some of the asteroids were as large as Rhode Island or Delaware, and their collisions with the Moon created basins hundreds of kilometers across.

Cities

The 1.8 million people packed in this city [Houston, Texas] half the size of Rhode Island love their cars, but transit officials say a small light rail line could help get them off roads and freeways clogged with pollution-pumping vehicles.

Associated Press, "Light rail at crossroads this week in Houston," by Kristen Hays, March 11, 2001.

The city of Dallas [Texas] is the size of Rhode Island, [yet] they have [only] one district.

Clothing

Let's face it, it's too late for most of us. We're doomed to a life sentence of sensible shoes. But it's not too late to rise up and reject this mean-spirited attempt to rob youth of its God-given right to be ridiculous. Do it for pants the size of Rhode Island, surgically-attached baseball caps, and jewelry-studded appendages yearning to be free. Do it for THE KIDS!

I see these people with big jackets, collars the size of Rhode Island, zippers oh-so-inconspicuously zipped down to that strange area between the nipple and the navel, and I am aware that they are hip.

Mitt: n. the great big lump of fucking leather in which the soft bastards catch the fucking ball. The mitt is the size of Rhode Island so that the useless bastards don't fucking drop it. Why they can't just use their bare hands like we do in cricket, I have no idea. Perhaps it's because they're a bunch of soft fuckers.

Countries

Self proclaimed "Rhode Island enthusiast" Dan Bertwell has created a website that allows the user to find out the number of Rhode Islands that might fit into any given country on the globe. This is sure to be a boon to writers, newscasters, and anyone who has ever wondered how Rhode Island stacks up against their own favorite benchmark. Check it out at howmanyrhodeislands.com.

.

[Leonid] Tibilov, 60, is a former KGB officer who became South Ossetia's security minister in 1992, shortly after the mountainous province the size of Rhode Island broke away from Georgia in a war.

This series of [nine islands that make up Cape Verde], which together are about the size of Rhode Island, sits 300 miles off the African coast, but it's nothing like the rest of the continent: The literacy rate is 77 percent, nearly double that of the nearest African country, Senegal, and health standards are considered the highest in West Africa.

I'm very proud to be the first American in the field. To be in the top 10 in Boston is great at the age of 42. I was born in a small country. Belgium is the size of Rhode Island. This is a big country and I'm the one representing it. Where is everybody else? It's kind of disappointing that there are not more U.S. runners. The other Americans are not here today.

European Countries Smaller Than Rhode Island... Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Vatican City and, the hard one... the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (located, like Vatican City, entirely within Rome's city limits).

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is the size of Rhode Island with roughly the population of Wyoming, the ambassador, Alphonse Berns, explained.

The State, "Republicans Holding Up Ambassadorial, Other Appointments," November 24, 1997.

Deserts

Sand stretches to the horizon, dunes rise more than 1,500 feet, and farmers flee their parched plots for work in the city. Welcome to northern China, where desertification—land degradation caused primarily by human activities—is wiping out close to a million acres of grassland a year (an area nearly as large as Rhode Island). Striving to feed twenty percent of the world's population, the Chinese have overgrazed, overfarmed, and created new deserts in the process.

The Kuwait desert is as flat as a patio and as big as Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.

Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism by P.J. O'Rourke, 2004.

The world is turning to dust, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says.

Located in all this [Alaskan] beauty is the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, which serves over 10,000 students and covers 25,600 square miles (bigger than Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined).

Fictional places

One million exhibitors. Sixty million attendees. Four trillion booths spread across an area the size of Rhode Island.

New York Times, "Same Old Electronics Show, With Some Intriguing New Ideas," by David Pogue, January 10, 2008

Like a lot of action films, the Bond franchise has always used comedy to blunt the violence and bring in big audiences. And, much like the franchiseâs increasingly bloated action sequences, which always seem to involve thousands of uniformed extras scurrying around sets the size of Rhode Island, the humor eventually leached the series of its excitement, its sense of risk.

New York Times, "Renewing a License to Kill and a Huge Movie Franchise," November 17, 2006.

[Asheron's Call] ...is staged on the island continent of Dereth ...an island roughly 24 miles to each side. (Approximately half the size of Rhode Island.)

He guessed that [Staronia] was about as big as Rhode Island, or Chicago—but on further search he found that it was of respectable size—he was unused to the vast stretch of the African Continent.

"Princess Lorraine—American" by George Edmund Holt, The Modern Priscilla, October 1915.

Fires

A vast wildfire, measuring half the size of the state of Rhode Island and described as the second worst fire in Arizona history, continues to surge across eastern Arizona. The Wallow Fire has destroyed approximately 337,000 acres and threatens main electrical lines that supply power as far away as west Texas.

The Possum Kingdom fire is the fifth of at least 100,000 acres around Texas reported in the past two weeks. Most of the state is in extreme drought, and wildfires in the past week alone have burned more than 1,000 square miles of parched Texas ranchland—an area that combined would be the size of Rhode Island.

Up to 455,000 acres were laid waste between Friday and Monday alone—10 times the annual average for the past 50 years, according to the European Commission's European Forest Fire Information System. A total 665,000 acres—an area almost the size of Rhode Island—went up in smoke since the start of the year.

Dunham said the smoke was caused by a fire east of James Bay in northern Quebec that consumed more than 350 square miles of forest. That's about one-third the size of Rhode Island, Dunham said, utilizing the Rhode Island-sized unit of measure typically implemented in references to ranches and icebergs.

Flags

What snapped me to attention was mention in the Seattle Times of the flag Admiral Ellison... is flying from the 250-foot luxury yacht that serves as his New Zealand headquarters... It sure looks like an American flag. Except where you're used to seeing the 50 stars, you'll see USA-76, the name of Ellison's America's Cup entry. And the stripes? They're there OK, representing the original 13 colonies, but emblazoned in white lettering on the last stripe is a 14th colony, or maybe a colonizer: ORACLE. The flag is immense—roughly the size of Rhode Island. OK, you figured that. Admiral Ellison understands that the meek might indeed inherit the earth, but in the meantime the arrogant have the best shot at conquering it.

Glaciers and Ice Fields

U.S. Department of the Interior, Facebook, January 26, 2016.

Between 2003 and 2008 [Antactica gained] 82 billion tons of ice per year. It's difficult to imagine that much ice, but it would be enough to cover the state of Rhode Island about 85 feet deep every year in pure form.

At the top of Alaska's panhandle, Malaspina Glacier spills from a funnel of rock in the St. Elias Mountains and spreads to form a huge pancake between the mountains and the sea. That pancake is as large as Rhode Island, but Malaspina is thinning fast.

Icebergs

Not only does this category say something about the use of Rhode Island as a unit of measure, it also supplies ample fodder for the global warming/sky is falling crowd. Funny thing is, if the ice caps do melt, Rhode Island will shrink, perhaps disappearing altogether. What will we use to measure really big things then?

Curious about the iceberg situation today, he started researching and found himself looking at an Antarctic iceberg the size of Rhode Island, which was broken off when the Mertz Ice Tongue was bumped by another iceberg the size of Luxembourg.

Los Angeles Times, "Titanic today might dodge better but would encounter more icebergs," by Dean Kuipers, April 3, 2012. Submitted by Amelia, Providence ("Luxembourg [is] another popular unit of measurement I absolutely cannot imagine," she notes, "because, well, who can picture Luxembourg anyway? The readers of the LA Times, I guess).

The state of Alaska itself is like one big whale. Chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island exist like barnacles.

"Light Pollution" from How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley, 2010. Submitted by Christina, Seattle, Washington ("A state," she notes, "that could fit about sixty-nine Rhode Islands).

By mid-March remarkable satellite images showed that some 1,300 square miles of Larson B, a slab bigger than the state of Rhode Island, had fragmented

Two years ago an iceberg broke off the Ross Shelf that was four miles wide and forty miles long. It was as big as Rhode Island.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton, 2004.

Despite the comparisons in size, the Cigar believes that we have to show the similarities and differences of the ice shelf and the Ocean State beyond just their size. Fact: Rhode Island is much taller than the ice shelf... Fact: The ice shelf has a lot more shoreline than Rhode Island... Fact: Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than the iceberg... Fact: Del's Lemonade is made of ice and Del's Lemonade was first made in Rhode Island.

Jon Stewart: Can you give us some insight on this collapse of this enormous Larsen B shelf?

Mo Rocca: Oh absolutely, Jon. The shelf that collapsed is twelve hundred and fifty square miles in area. That's approximately the size of the state of Rhode Island. Now to put that in perspective, imagine the state of Rhode Island. It's that size.

JS: Uh, Mo, for those who aren't familiar with Rhode Island, could you break it down, maybe a little different?

MR: Of course, Jon. Let me put this in layman's terms. Imagine the American cities of Pawtucket, Providence, Newport, Cumberland, and Woonsocket. Now imagine a land mass that encompasses all these cities.

JS: That's, uh, that's Rhode Island.

MR: Exactly.

JS: Is there any way for you to broaden our understanding independent of, let's say, comparison to Rhode Island?

MR: I'm sorry, Jon, I wish I could, but Rhode Island is the industry standard. Now if the ice shelf were really, really big I could, of course, use Texas, but generally it has to be one of those two.

Phillipe and Jorge hear a wonderful story about a friend and well-known scientist who was formerly at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography. National Geographic's last issue had a feature on the Antarctic, including a huge iceberg that had actually blocked a shipping route at the South Pole. The author of the story was in the Antarctic giving a presentation and described the berg as being, in the typical cliched analogy, "as big as Rhode Island." Our friend, who was visiting the pole at the time, went ballistic, telling the reporter to never use that expression again or she'd kick him or something. At another presentation a few days later, also attended by P&J's friend, the Geographic writer began describing the iceberg again, and when he got to the line "as big as...," he pointedly turned toward her and uttered, "as Delaware," saying it with a smile. The article on Antarctica and the iceberg eventually saw print, and sure enough, included the phrase "as big as Delaware." Our friend, as Groucho would say, was defending our honor, which is more than we ever do.

The Providence Phoenix, "Phillipe and Jorge's Cool, Cool World," by Phillipe and Jorge, February 1, 2002. Submitted by Loring Holden.

Another significant iceberg calved around March 31 [2000]. Known as... B17, it is about 80 by 12 miles, or roughly the size of Rhode Island.

Lycos Zone, "Icebergs Ahoy: A monster berg is on the loose," by Holly Hartman, (August 2000).

A U.S. research ship and a British Royal Air Force C-130 photographed an iceberg about the size of Rhode Island that's drifted in the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica in August 1999, prompting the U.S. National Ice Center to issue an alert to shipping.

While few modern ships are likely to run into an iceberg the size of Rhode Island, like B-10A, they certainly could hit one of the thousands of smaller icebergs that break away from the main mass as it floats into warmer water.

About.com, "The National Ice Center," by Robert Longley, September 15, 1999.

To retwist the most overused size comparison in all of journalism, it would be a very unfortunate sea captain who managed to run into a floating Rhode Island... Now, a whole bunch of pieces, none of which is anywhere near the size of Rhode Island (and so cannot be compared to anything sizewise) are bobbing around, the bulk of their potentially dangerous bulk below the surface and, in some cases, mere hints peeking above the water.

When icicles hang by the wall and blood is nipped and ways be foul, when the Great Lakes freeze into ice packs the size of Rhode Island and shipping is stilled, then folks in the Midwest are moved to fish through the ice, a curious, seasonal madness for which there is no known cure except spring.

Time, "In Ohio: Rescue from an Icy Island," by Chris Redman, February 16, 1981.

Islands

Measuring 100 miles by 35 miles, [Puerto Rico is] the size of three Rhode Islands, and with three-and-a-half million people, the population of three Hawaiis.

Jewelry

"I bet there will still be question marks next week," Andruzzi said, unzipping his valuables bag and taking out a ring the size of Rhode Island; the one the Patriots backed into when nobody was looking, and all the good teams were on sabbatical.

[The Zoot Suit] is topped off with a wide-brimmed hat, a key chain that hangs from the belt to below the knees, a wide satin tie, and cuff links the size of Rhode Island.

Great Moments in Sex by Cheryl Rilly, 1999.

Maps

He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in front of a map that was as big as Rhode Island. He went on up till he was out of sight, and by and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again.

Military

On a stretch of California desert the size of Rhode Island at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms here, thousands of Marines train for combat each year. And the ammunition casings, shells and bomb fragments fired in these exercises are making the Marine Corps millions of dollars each year.

The U.S. military base Fort Bliss, covering an area larger than Rhode Island, has become one of America's largest military installations, and that's having a dramatic impact on an otherwise depressed economy.

Two helicopters will be used, one as a backup. One will trail 400 feet of cable and a hook to intercept the Genesis space capsule, which will float to Earth Sept. 8 at about 9 mph on a parasail over an Air Force bombing range the size of Rhode Island.

Maloney said the addition of a division is feasible because "Fort Bliss has enormous potential. The post alone is the size of Rhode Island, but put it together with White Sands Missile Range and Holloman (Air Force Base), and it's almost the size of Connecticut," he said.

Meanwhile, elements of the 3rd Infantry and the 1st Cavalry are slated for training this fall at the Army's sprawling National Training Center in California's Mojave Desert. The training site is roughly the size of Rhode Island, and its tawny mountains and wide, sandy stretches closely resemble the barren landscape of much of Iraq.

I became in the 1980s an antinuclear activist and participated in the spring demonstrations at the Nevada Test Site, a Department of Energy site the size of Rhode Island in southern Nevada where the United States has been detonating nuclear bombs—more than a thousand to date—since 1951.

Now the great hunt would always begin with the armies spread out in a semicircle, I would say about the size of Rhode Island.

Frank McRae, in the 1984 film Red Dawn, explaining the military strategy of Gengis Khan.

My state is soooo small...

Whenever I travel around the country to make a presentation or give a seminar, I find that people have no concept of the size of Rhode Island. For instance, they can't believe that in the entire state there is only one NBC television station, while other states may have five to ten, depending on how many metropolitan areas their state has. So when describing Rhode Island, I say it's about the size of an Australian sheep farm. Of course, most people don't know how big a sheep farm is, so they still don't get it. All they can visualize is sheep manure stretched from here to the horizon.

Despite all the controversy, [Julie] Pizzi said yesterday she thinks the show [Real World/Road Rules Challenge] would raise Rhode Island's profile across the country. When she went to get a California drivers license, she said, the woman at the counter would not accept her Rhode Island license. "The lady in California did not know Rhode Island was a state," Pizzi said.

Look at the way it cringes there, occupying a sliver of land so inconsequential that the names of its cities and towns have to be entered vertically on the map. It is foolish for something so microscopic to go around posing as a state. Anyone who has ever been there knows what I mean. You drive into Rhode Island, nod off for 10 or 20 minutes or embark on an interesting conversation and—zap—you're in Massachusetts. You're out of the place before you can settle into it. Flying over Little Rhody is absurdity itself; you can traverse it in the middle of a sentence.

The oil, which could reach shore in as little as three days, is escaping from two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The spill has grown to more than 1,800 square miles, or an area larger than Rhode Island.

Parks, sanctuaries, and wildlife management areas

And this wasn't even Yellowstone's most violent moment. An eruption 2.1 million years ago was more than twice as strong, leaving a hole in the ground the size of Rhode Island.

National Geographic, "When Yellowstone Explodes," by Joel Achenbach, August 2009. Submitted by vi.

The biggest V[olcanic] E[xplosivity] I[ndex] was the massive eruption of the so-called "supervolcano" beneath the Yellowstone basin 2 million years ago. It left a caldera or depression in the ground bigger than Rhode Island.

Its whereabouts were never firmly established until today, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the wreck was found in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, an area about the size of Rhode Island between Cape Ann and Cape Cod, at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay.

My friend Jackie was living in Yosemite. Her husband was president of the company that ran all the concessions, so he was the Big Bear as far as the commercial side of Yosemite went. "You're the Queen of Rhode Island," I said to Jackie, once I learned Yosemite was the size of Rhode Island. She pooh-poohed the idea, said they lived a simple, quiet life in the woods, facing Half Dome and whatever stars of film or industry happened to be passing through that week.

Ranches

Ford plans to announce the new TowBoss package, an option on the dual-rear-wheel F-350 pickup, today at the Texas State Fair, where it will also reveal a King Ranch luxury trim style for its Expedition large sport-utility vehicle, which licenses the name and logo of the Texas ranch that is bigger than Rhode Island and inspired the 1950s movie classic "Giant."

The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. It comprises 1.25 million acres and was the first ranch in the world to be completely fenced in. At one time, its borders were guarded by armed patrol.

Random tracts of geography

So each February, hundreds of beekeepers from around the country converge on the almond farms with their hives in tow. Lasting about four weeks, it's the largest such pollination effort on Earth: 1.6 million hives buzzing with 48 billion bees across an area about the size of Rhode Island. Practically a bee Woodstock.

Indigenous peoples living near the Foja range, which rises to 2,200 meters (7,218 feet), said they did not venture into the trackless area of 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles)—roughly the size of Luxembourg or the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

Reuters, "'Lost world' found in jungle," February 8, 2006. Submitted by vi and Cynthia.

Detectives have scoured an area [near Peoria, Illinois] about three-quarters the size of Rhode Island—1,278 square miles.

The network is 10 times larger than a proposed citywide Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) network in Philadelphia—one that media reports last week inaccurately said would be the largest in the world. Covering parts of Walla Walla, Columbia, Franklin, Benton and Umatilla counties, Columbia Energy's 1,500-square-mile Wi-Fi hot spot is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.

In the unprecedented operation, about 14,000 federal firefighters and other searchers have braved hazards such as poisonous snakes, scorpions, toad-strangling downpours and sucking mud as they tramped through piney woods and thickets mined with giant toxic nose-piercing thorns. They have traveled by means ranging from a modified U-2 spy plane to plain old shoe leather. In just 11 weeks, they have scoured, yard by yard, a swath of the Southwest almost the size of Rhode Island.

Officials say Louisiana loses 20 to 35 square miles of its coastline annually, with the state having lost 1,000 square miles between 1956 and 1990. They anticipate another 1,000 square miles—nearly the size of Rhode Island—will be lost by 2050.

Now, scientists exploring the wilds of Guatemala say they have found the mother lode—a mountainous region roughly the size of Rhode Island strewn with huge jade boulders, other rocky treasures and signs of ancient mining.

New York Times, "In Guatemala, a Rhode Island-Size Jade Lode," by William J. Broad, May 22, 2002.

Nuclear testing was conducted above and below ground from 1952 to 1992 at the Nevada Test Site, the federal reservation north of Las Vegas that, at 1,375 square miles, is larger than Rhode Island.

While the strategy isn't new - Columbus has used its control of water and sewer lines to expand city boundaries since 1950 - a Plain Dealer analysis shows America's boom cities swallowed nearly 1,000 square miles of land in the 1990s. That's an area about the size of Rhode Island.

The Plain Dealer, "Cities eager to grow know no boundaries," by Dave Davis and Robert L. Smith, March 17, 2002.

The 12- by 6-mile chunk [of Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano] that moved extends five miles into the earth's crust, making its mass roughly equal to that of a quarter-mile thick, Rhode Island-sized object, the researchers said.

According to the government's own statistics, the entire yearly demand for heroin in the United States can be met by less than 25 square miles of opium-poppy fields; 250 square miles, about one-fifth the size of Rhode Island, is enough to meet our yearly cocaine demand.

New York Times, "Our Demand for Drugs," letter to the Editor by Keith Sanders, May 29, 2001.

Rhode Island yesterday acquired an interest in a huge tract of land in Maine that is about as large as, well, the entire state of Rhode Island.

A new unit of length is needed... I humbly present: The RhodeIsland. Let's face it, newscasters already use this unit of measurement all the time. Other states are described in terms of how many RhodeIslands large they are. Martian craters are reported to be 43 times the size of Rhode Island. We have practically accepted it into our national speech already; it remains only to make it official. Then when large ocean movements occur and meteorites fly through space, we will no longer be constrained to the insignificant mile. We shall give a more vivid picture of measurement with our own states. Even tired old aphorisms will become revitalized: "Do not judge another man until you have walked a RhodeIsland in his shoes."

Providence Journal, "Under a king's foot," (letter to the Editor by Seth Brown, November 29, 2000.

And so by means of a false deed, and use of runners, the Penns acquired 1200 square miles of Lenape land in Pennsylvania, an area about the size of Rhode Island!

Last Friday evening federal Judge Lawrence L. Piersol issued an injunction preventing the immediate destruction of 750,000 acres of wetlands scattered throughout South Dakota. (In case you are wondering, 750,000 acres is an area just slightly smaller than Rhode Island.)

There's a very small country in the West Indies. I mean small. It's terribly small. Tiny little country. Rhode Island could beat the crap out of it in a war. That's how small it is. Eighty-five cents in a cab from one end of the country to the other. I'm talking small. They recently had the whole country carpeted. This is not a big place.

Dudley Moore, in the 1981 film Arthur, trying to pass off his hooker date (Anne De Salvo) as the princess of a small, unnamed country.

Real estate

After these heart-wrenching stories of poverty, it was on to the Sheindlins' newest addition, in Naples, Fla. A 10,000- square-foot penthouse that's larger than the city of Providence.

Nina Banks (Diane Keaton): N-Now don't go nuts when I tell you this, but when Bryan's mom... called with her list, she suggested that they might just wanna... pitch in and help with the cost of the wedding.
George Banks (Steve Martin): You know, hey, we may not have a house the size of Rhode lsland, but we're not poverty-stricken! We can certainly afford to give our daughter a proper wedding!

Regions and territories

The [Australian Capital Territory], although geographically small at 2800 km2 (a little smaller than Rhode Island, east coast of the USA), includes a diverse range of habitats, including native grasslands, rivers, lakes, montane forests as well as sub-alpine woodlands and bogs.

Now an American businessman wants to build a huge game park and resort complex in the 580,000-acre [Matatuine region of Mozambique]—almost the size of Rhode Island—complete with a five-star hotel, floating casinos and bush lodges with access to the tropical coast and wild interior.

The Cincinnati Post, "Big Game Resort Would Be A 1st; American Behind Mozambique Plan," December 11, 1997.

Eighteen Massachusetts can be put into Dakota [Territory], with ample room left to receive the little State of Rhode Island.

Marvels of the New West by William M. Thayer, 1887.

States and provinces

Note: All Texans know that if you were to melt Alaska, it would be smaller than Rhode Island!

One hundred Rhode Islands can be set down upon [Alaska's] 104,500 square miles. One of its counties (Gunnison) is larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined. [Colorado] has four magnificent parks, situated in the mountains, from seven thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea, the smaller of which is equal to two Rhode Islands; and the State of Massachusetts could be set within the larger. These four parks contain as many acres as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island together... Kansas is almost ten times larger than Massachusetts, nearly seventeen times larger than Connecticut, sixty-five times larger than Rhode Island; and its area more than equals the combined area of all the New England States, with Maryland and Delaware added... Montana is almost as large as Dakota, and can spread seventeen Massachusetts and one Rhode Island over its ample surface.

Marvels of the New West by William M. Thayer, 1887.

The Tunguska event

The power of the blast felled trees outward in a radial pattern over an area of 2,150 square kilometers, more than half the size of Rhode Island.

In 1908 near Tunguska in Siberia a meteor probably consisting of loosely bound pieces about 60 meters (200 ft) in diameter completely disintegrated before hitting the ground, so no crater was formed; however, all the trees were flattened and wildlife killed in an area 50 km (30 mi) in diameter, more than half the size of Rhode Island.

Of course water conservation is out of the question - out west we insist on bluegrass lawns in the desert, casino fountains as big as Rhode Island, and wet streets for that early morning jog or drive to the office.